OUR OPINION: House renegades scuttle farm bill

SAN ANGELO, Texas - If the new and largely untested Republican freshman and sophomore classes of the House had a leader, it’s likely that John Boehner and Eric Cantor would no longer be, respectively, speaker and majority leader.

On Thursday, the conservative, anti-spending newcomers cut the legs out from under Boehner and Cantor by helping to vote down, 195-234, a leadership-backed extension of the farm bill, normally a routine matter.

The measure would set farm policy for the next five years and spend $940 billion over the decade. The legislation contained spending cuts — nearly $40 billion, as opposed to $24 billion in the Senate plan — plus reforms that the leadership and agriculture committee thought members wanted.

They included: limiting the amount of federal payments any one farm could receive; ending the practice of across-the-board cash payments; and making crop insurance more of a genuine insurance program rather than an automatic giveaway.

The bill seemed set to pass — Democrats were even willing to swallow a 10-year, $20.5 billion cut in food stamps — except for two last-minute amendments: One undid an agreed-upon compromise on dairy-price supports; the other would allow states to impose work requirements for able-bodied food-stamp recipients. That would be fine if there were jobs available for the unskilled and semiskilled workers who typically receive food stamps, but there aren’t.

Normally GOP leaders might sit back to see what the Senate does, but the Democratic-run Senate has already passed its own version. And it’s unlikely to redo it just to get the House GOP out of a partisan bind.

The House can do nothing for the time being, allowing the existing farm programs to expire Sept. 30, and then do what members did last year when they couldn’t get an agreement — pass a temporary resolution extending the status quo. That’s better than nothing, but it doesn’t provide much help for farmers looking for some clarity and certainty.